


Aftershocks

by Steerpike13713



Category: Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated (TV 2010)
Genre: Dysfunctional Relationships, F/F, F/M, Gen, Guilt, Misunderstandings, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, imposter syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 12:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9123550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steerpike13713/pseuds/Steerpike13713
Summary: After the destruction of the Nibiru Entity, and the creation of a new timeline, the Gang finds that the effects of the former timeline are not as easily shaken off as they might have hoped.





	

**Daphne**

In the first few days after the world ended, and then started all over again, it seemed like a dream come true. And not the sort of dreams Daphne actually has, full of foot-eating shoes and crazy man-baby clowns and the glowing eyes of the Nibiru entity. It’s not that Daphne doesn’t love her sisters – even Daisy, no matter how _maddening_ she can be sometimes – but…it’s a special sort of awful, being the only one in a family of six who isn’t mind-bogglingly talented at _something_. Shaggy comes close to understanding it sometimes, but it’s not something either of them have ever really talked about, that endless pressure to be perfect. So, with the entity gone and the world restored, the fact that that pressure was _gone_ seemed like the joyful cherry on an ice-cream sundae of happiness. It wasn’t until the first Thanksgiving Daphne came home from college after the gang’s long road-trip from Crystal Cove to Arkham that she really started to notice what was wrong with it all.

They’d planned to come back in the Mystery Machine, except that Scooby was still leery of Mr and Mrs Rogers after the farm thing, even if neither of them remembered it, and Fred bottled out of coming home at the last minute for reasons he wouldn’t talk to anyone else about. Daphne is pretty sure that would’ve hurt more in the old timeline, for reasons she refuses to think about too deeply. Here, though…well, they both have their secrets, even from each other, and she’s made her peace with that. Fred has saved her life a hundred times, and she has done the same for him, and that is trust enough for anyone. So she and Velma and Shaggy flew back to Crystal Cove, all of them trying not to think about how much lying they’d have to do just to get through the holiday.

It was Delilah who picked Daphne up at the airport. It still gave Daphne an awful sort of shock, to see her like that. Delilah was still tall, still lean, her hair still severely bobbed to her chin, but for the first time in Daphne’s memory she seemed awkward, ill-at-ease with herself, gawky and gangling and so profoundly _unhappy_ it hurt to look at her.

“Hey, sis,” Daphne said awkwardly, twisting her hands together in her lap as Delilah started the car, “Uh…how’ve things been, since I’ve been away.”

“As usual,” Delilah said shortly, her hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel. “Mom and Dad are still pissed you and Fred pushed the wedding back.”

Daphne’s stomach twisted. “I- I just don’t think we’re ready for it,” she said weakly, “Fred’s still working through some stuff.”

“Same stuff that had you all disappearing off on that road trip last summer?” Delilah asked, staring fixedly ahead. “Heard some pretty wild stories about what you were up to, baby sis.”

Daphne grinned a little. “Yes…well…we just happened to run into a lot of mysteries for some reason. And we’re _good_ at it, Delilah. Better than I ever thought I’d be at anything.”

Delilah snorted softly. “Really? What’s that like?”

It was around that point that Daphne started to wonder if she hadn’t really done something terrible, for things to have ended up like this. The feeling only intensified when they got home, and the first words out of her mother’s mouth were:

“Oh, _darling_ , how good it is to see you! We were so _disappointed_ when we heard you and Freddie weren’t planning to tie the knot this year – you know, you really should hurry up with that, you don’t want to end up going the same way as your underachieving sisters.”

Daphne’s eyes flicked over, almost of their own volition, to where the four of her sisters still at home were huddled together, and the words ‘safety in numbers’ flickered through her mind. In her own world, Deirdre would be home too at this time of the year, but she’d found out why that wasn’t happening even before she’d set off for Massachusetts.  Deirdre had apparently got pregnant and run off to Oregon with her high school boyfriend instead of becoming an astronaut here. Although, looking at the rest of the family, Daphne wondered if Deirdre hadn’t got off easy – she, at least, had seemed happy.

“I don’t know, Mom,” she said, forcing a smile, “There’s just so much to do – and we’re only eighteen, still. There’s plenty of time to get married in the future.”

Nearby, she heard Daisy mutter something that would, in the old timeline, have been condescending. Now, though, she could see the bitterness in Daisy’s expression, and the envy, which was worse.

Dinner was worse – Mom and Dad had never been exactly _nice_ where concerned their daughters not living up to expectations, but they seemed to take it to a whole new level here.

“It’s no wonder you haven’t been able to find a man, Daisy, with manners like those – just look at Daphne, she’s doing it _beautifully_.”

“Please, Dawn, you dress like somebody’s maiden aunt! _Why_ you couldn’t have inherited my dress sense the same way Daphne seems to!”

“Delilah, sit up straight – Daphne’s eight years younger than you, and _she_ seems to have managed it.”

“ _Really_ , Dorothy, why can’t you be more like Daphne!”

And, all right, maybe in the beginning Daphne enjoyed it, just a little – she had been on the receiving ends of enough comments of that nature that it felt like poetic justice, at least at first. But after the first few comments, Daphne started noticing other things. Like the way Dorothy seemed to shrink back further into her seat with every barbed remark, or how Daisy looked down and played with her oversized glasses so she wouldn’t have to look their mother in the face. Like the way Delilah’s face went blank rather than showing any hint of pain, and Dawn just sat there, numb, as the tirade washed over her. It had been bad enough for Daphne, and she’d been only a teenager, and not as inescapably a failure as her sisters were now in their parents’ eyes. The longer the dinner went on, the harder Daphne found it not to think about what it must be like, to live with that as an adult, day in and day out because there was no way to _leave_. There wasn’t even a relief when dinner ended, because now her parents wanted to hear all about how things had gone at Miskatonic, and make lofty remarks about maybe transferring back to Darrow next year, to be nearer the family. Daphne smiled and made vague remarks and resolved that nothing short of a crowbar would get her to live in the same _state_ as her family again as long as she might live. All of her sisters were expected to sit in the drawing room and listen, and it was uncomfortable, feeling the empty places where there would have been questions or condescending remarks, in the old world. She never thought she’d miss Daisy’s inimitable way of making her feel like shit, but this silent, shy, nervy version of her least favourite sister was just _wrong_.

She poured out the whole thing to Velma the next day at Gibbs’ Steakhouse, which had apparently replaced the Bloody Stake in this universe. The food wasn’t as good as Daphne remembered, but she couldn’t tell if that was a back-from-college thing or a whole-universe-got-rewritten thing.

“Hmm,” Velma said noncommittally. “I haven’t noticed anything similar with my family – the parentals run a bookstore in this world, apparently. It’s weird, but I almost miss giving those stupid tours.”

Daphne frowned, picking at her fries. “And I’d never have thought I’d miss being constantly overshadowed by my sisters, but now…” she sighed. “They’re _miserable_ , Velma. When I said I wished they weren’t so…so _perfect_ , I never meant this much!”

“Yeah, well,” Velma shrugged, “What can we do about it? This is the world now. I had a hard enough time trying to explain things to Marcie.”

Daphne blinked, “You’re still seeing her, then?”

“Yup.” Velma allowed herself a grin, “She’s smart, my girl. She knows there’s something up, even if she hasn’t figured out what yet. I don’t know if I’m going to tell her the whole thing yet or not – I’m going to have to, one day, if we keep this up, but with her at Darrow and me back in Arkham it hadn’t come up before.”

Daphne shook her head, “But, then- What am I supposed to do? This- It is all our fault, isn’t it? Okay, I’m not certain, but shouldn’t history have changed more than this? Why is Fred still _Fred_ , for one thing? Wouldn’t Brad Chiles and Judy Reeves have called him something else?”

“You’re not wrong,” Velma agreed, “I’ve suspected for a while that our subconscious wishes might have affected this new reality, but I haven’t got any reliable way to prove it. But…listen, we saved the world. Period. Whatever happened since then, it’s a step up from being dead.”

Daphne bit her lip. “I guess…” she scowled down at her fries. “But I’m not going to just leave them to it, either! Maybe…It’s not too late, right? Lots of people don’t find what they want to do until later in life, right?”

“Statistically, that is true,” Velma agreed, which wasn’t exactly encouraging, but Daphne wasn’t listening.

There were a few places around Crystal Cove which offered what Daphne was looking for, even if the army recruiter’s had given her some very odd looks when she’d come in asking for pamphlets or information guides or anything of that nature. The others…she didn’t know how Daisy got into medicine, and honestly hadn’t cared, and she didn’t know what it had meant to her. For Dorothy and Dawn, things would be more complicated, but Delilah had always been Daphne’s favourite of her sisters, and her happiness definitely came first.

She waited until the last day she’d be in Crystal Cove, the night before her flight back to Arkham, before she went to Delilah’s room, pamphlets in hand, and knocked tentatively on the door.

Delilah wasn’t long in answering – she looked pale and wrung-out, a little hunched over, in clothes that didn’t suit her complexion at _all_. “Oh…uh…hey, baby sis. What is it?”

Daphne swallowed. “Uh…can I come in, please? I’ve got something to show you.”

“Ok, then,” Delilah pulled the door open a bit wider, “Guess I haven’t got anything else to do.”

Well, wasn’t that encouraging? Daphne bit back any one of the hundreds of things she could have said, and sat down awkwardly on the end of Delilah’s bed. “Look, I…I saw these around town today, and…well, you always used to be really into the whole military history thing – you could seriously beat my ass at paintball even when I was a kid, and it’s not as if you’re too old to join up if you wanted – If you don’t want that’s fine too, but I just thought it’d be…”

“Huh.” Delilah tugged the papers out of Daphne’s unresisting hand and turned them over. “I, uh, I don’t think they’d be interested in someone like me, Daph. Thanks all the same.”

Daphne glared at her, “What do you mean ‘someone like you’?” she demanded, “You were _made_ for this! Seriously, I can’t imagine anything that would suit you better!”

“Yeah, but…come on, I’m twenty-six and still living with my parents. That’s pretty pathetic, sis. And I can’t…haven’t you got to be able to do all sorts of things to do well at something like that.”

“You don’t _have_ to,” Daphne said, putting her hand on Delilah’s, “Just…there are tests online, you could take a couple, or just sign up. And if they’ll take you, they’ll take you, and if they won’t…well, what have you lost? Sometimes…” she swallowed, “Sometimes you have to take the crazy chance, or nothing ever gets better.”

It was another few weeks after she went home before her parents mentioned in a phone call that Delilah had gone and joined the army and maybe she’d at least meet a nice young officer who could overlook her many, many shortcomings. After that, it took almost a month for the first letter to arrive, with a photo tucked into the envelope. These days, that picture is still up on Daphne’s noticeboard, half-tucked behind a news clipping about the Old Iron Face case. It shows Delilah Blake, in her new army uniform with a rifle over her shoulder. Still just a private, but Daphne has faith in her sister’s abilities – she’ll be sergeant before too long, and from there, they’ll have to see. Being overshadowed is never much fun, and Daphne can afford to be magnanimous in victory.

**Fred**

The thing is- The thing is, Fred doesn’t really know his real parents. He didn’t know them for most of his life because they just weren’t _there_ , and later he didn’t know them because…well, evil entity twisting their minds, corrupting their souls and finally devouring them alive right in front of him. He tells himself that that’s the reason he doesn’t go home for Thanksgiving or Christmas, or call home much at all. It’d be too easy to slip up and ‘forget’ something major about one or both of them that he never learnt in the old world, or to behave too much like Fred _Jones_ , and not Fred Chiles. They call him, every now and then, sounding worried and distant and far, far too much like the parents who tried to _kill_ Fred on Pericles’ orders, and at the end hardly acknowledged him as their son at all. Fred tries to get those phone calls over as quickly as possible, even if it makes him feel oddly guilty that he can’t at least try to be the son they remember. Fred Chiles – who was apparently a balanced, normal, happy teenager. Yeah…Fred has never known how to pretend to be any of those things. Even as a kid, he got laughed at for his obsession with traps, his awkwardness around people, his inability to really ‘get’ social cues. He doesn’t think Fred Chiles was ever laughed at for anything – he even seems to have been _popular_ – and Brad and Judy are sharp enough they’d pick up on it, if their son started acting weird.

The whole first semester at Miskatonic, Fred didn’t call home at all. He _knew_ it was going to seem weird to the people who knew this world’s Fred in high school, but he couldn’t pretend to be friends with Gary and Ethan or join in the sort of clubs Fred Chiles was apparently into before the universe got rewritten. He didn’t call home until after that thing in Innsmouth, which was the single creepiest mystery the gang had investigated since this new world got started, but still small fry next to Professor Pericles or the Entity he had served. He didn’t even know who he was calling until he heard the click and a familiar voice at the other end.

“Hello. Fred Jones speaking.”

Fred swallowed. “Uh…hey,” he says awkwardly. _Hey, Dad_ , he thinks. “I, uh, didn’t know if you’d still be up. It’s past midnight over here - we just got back from Innsmouth, there was this guy calling himself the Fisherman…”

“Leaping lily-pads – Fred? Is that you, son?”

Fred squeezed his eyes shut, grinning helplessly even though he knew it was only meant in the general ‘young man I care about’ sense, and not the way he felt it. “It’s me,” he admitted shakily, “I kept forgetting to call before now.”

“Well, I wasn’t expecting anything, but it’s great to hear from you. So, how’s life at Miskatonic treating you? I heard you and the gang got into mystery-solving over the summer.”

“It’s great!” Fred exclaimed, “Better than great – did you know there’s a trap-makers’ association here? And lectures on the mechanics of trap-building? I’ve read about some of these ideas before, of course, but I never thought I’d see one in action…”

There came a laugh from the other end of the line, “Well, I’m glad that’s working out for you. Angie did say you’d gotten into traps since the last time we saw each other – kind of heavily into traps, from what I hear.”

Fred nodded awkwardly, “Yeah…I mean…I still like soccer well enough and all, but _trapping_ …it’s like finding something I didn’t even know was missing ‘till now. Making traps, it’s…it’s what I was born to do, you know?”

“I know. We don’t always end up where we think we will.” At the other end of the line Mayor Dad – Principal Dad – Principal Jones – whatever Fred was supposed to call him now, coughed. “So, uh, any reason you’re calling me, Fred? From what I hear, Brad and Judy haven’t heard that much from you since you and the gang went off on that road-trip.”

“Yeah, I know, I…Da- Principal Jones? There’s…there’s something going on in my life. I can’t tell them about it. They wouldn’t understand.”

There was a long, careful pause. “Can you tell me about it?” his dad says cautiously. It’s the same tone he used to use when Fred was a kid in the old timeline, back when Mayor Dad still paid more attention to him than to the town’s tourist industry. Fred still didn’t know if that was down to the cursed treasure or him getting older, but he missed those days.

“I don’t know,” Fred admitted, “I…I don’t think so. It’s just…it’s such a big thing, and I can’t talk to them about it, but I can’t talk to them when they _don’t_ know about it, either.”

“Does this have something to do with you and Daphne cancelling the wedding?”

Fred frowned. “Uh…maybe a little?” he tried, not quite sure where that question was coming from. “I just…I don’t know. I don’t really feel like their son anymore. Maybe I never did.”

Another pause. “Do your friends know about…uh…your real identity, then?” It was a very gentle sort of question, which made it worse.

“Oh, yeah, they know, they’re cool,” Fred said quickly, “I just…it seems like my whole life’s been just…one long string of lies and misunderstandings. And I want to trust them with it, I really do, I just-” His throat closed up, and he couldn’t say anything more.

“Fred! Fred, listen to me. Whatever it is, your parents will understand. And, if they don’t…if they don’t, you don’t owe them anything, do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” Fred managed, “I…I need to go now.”

“Ok. Just…think about what I said, ok, Fred? You’re a very special young…person…and if they can’t see it, that’s on them.”

“I’ll think about it,” Fred promised, still slightly baffled, and hung up.

Well, so much for that line of advice. He couldn’t just tell them. Who’d believe him, for one thing? It wasn’t as if there was any surviving physical evidence of the old timeline. The only possible result of telling the truth was a one-way trip to the nearest mental facility, and Fred was pretty sure they didn’t let you build traps in there. And, anyway…Mayor Dad might have been…difficult…towards the end, but he’d never gone nearly as far as Fred’s real parents, the ones he’d been born with. When he thought of the Freak of Crystal Cove…yeah, he thought of the betrayals, the lies, but it was difficult to forget about the dad who’d taught him how to ride a bike and endangered his own evil scheme because he couldn’t let Fred die. And even when he knew this Brad Chiles and Judy Reeves had never done even one of the things he remembered, whenever he heard Judy’s voice or saw Brad’s smile, even in photographs, he felt edgy, cornered, _trapped_. Even the thought of just sitting down and talking traps with them brought Fred out in a cold sweat until he remembered that this world’s versions had never so much as touched a trap in their lives. And that thought was, if anything, even worse, because what did he and his parents really have in common if they didn’t have traps?

Fred didn’t call Brad and Judy that week. But, the next week, he found himself calling Mayor-turned-Principal Dad again, because who else was there to talk to? Daphne and Velma were both up to their eyeballs in extra credit work, and Shaggy had problems of his own. Besides, people were always saying Fred needed to talk to people outside of the gang more. They didn’t bring up the original timeline again, just traps, and the Crystal Cove soccer team’s latest teething troubles, and some of the mysteries even Fred Jones Senior had heard about, back in California. It just…somewhere along the line, it became routine, in a way that even in their old reality Fred wouldn’t have expected. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one who noticed it.

The second phone call came towards the end of the summer semester, and honestly Fred was less prepared for it than he had been for the first one. It wasn’t even as if anything that bad was going on; finals were over, and they’d just got wind of a really cool-sounding mystery they could go and investigate once Fred had finished the repairs to the Mystery Machine. So, when the phone rang, it didn’t strike him as anything that far out of the ordinary.

“Hey, uh, Principal Jones. You called just in time! The gang’s planning to head over to Oakhaven next week – there’s some sort of a witch-ghost over there, and Mr E’s called in a few favours so we can stay with this guy Ben Ravencroft-”

The voice that replied, though, wasn’t his dad. Or, not Mayor-turned-Principal Dad, who was still the first person Fred thought of when he thought of that word. “Hey, Freddie! Your mom and I were just-”

“-Wondering if there was anything you wanted to tell us,” Judy finished, and Fred’s stomach twisted painfully.

“Uh…no, no. Nothing that big’s going on. Well, there’s this thing in Oakhaven, but Velma reckons we should be able to get to the bottom of this one inside a week or so.”

Brad laughed, “Yeah, we’ve, uh, we’ve heard all about your little mystery-solving side-line. You’ve been making the papers quite a lot, you know.”

“And you mustn’t think we aren’t proud,” Judy put in, “Because we are,”

“ _Very_ proud.” Brad added.

“Yes, thank you, Brad – _very_ proud.”

Fred shifted the phone nervously in his hand. “Uh…thanks?” he managed weakly, even as all his trapping instincts were screaming at him to look for the catch in all of this.

“We were just wondering,” Judy went on, “All of this trapping and mystery-solving…when exactly did you-”

“-Start getting into all of this,” Brad finished, “Last time we saw you it was all soccer, all the time for our boy, isn’t that right, Judy?”

“That’s right, Brad!”

Fred tugged at his ascot, wondering if he’d tied it too tightly that morning and that was why he couldn’t breathe. “I- I just…I don’t know. I mean, soccer’s ok and all, I just…thought it was time for something new.”

“And we’re very glad that’s working out for you, son,” Brad said warmly. It ought to have made Fred feel better, but all it did was make the paranoid guilty itch in the back of his mind worse. Because Brad Chiles and Judy Reeves might be perfectly nice people in this new world, but Fred still heard the whoosh and whistle of their ground-to-air missile in the back of his mind, still sometimes saw the face of the aged ‘Daphne’ they had tried to trick him with. There was something _wrong_ in Fred, maybe, something broken, because there was a cold, dark place in the heart of him that would not forget and would not forgive.

“It’s just,” Judy said, “We’re worried about you, Fred. Ever since last summer, you’ve been sort of distant – Gary and Ethan say you haven’t emailed them back in weeks.”

Fred’s grip on the phone tightened slightly. “Yeah, well…I’ve been busy! You didn’t stay in touch with all your old friends from high school when you went to college, did you?”

“Some of them,” Judy corrected him, “You know we were friends with Ricky and Cassidy in high school too.”

Fred honestly hadn’t known that Brad and Judy were still in touch with Angel and Mr E in this world, but he couldn’t very well say that now.

“I know, I just…” he couldn’t say half of what he wanted to, and they wouldn’t listen if he did. And even if they did, it would hurt them, in ways he didn’t know that they deserved, here. Probably, they didn’t deserve any of what Fred would have to say to them, if they asked, and probably they deserved to live a happy life with their actual son, the one they’d really got to raise. But Fred wasn’t that person, he never had been, and he couldn’t undo that, he couldn’t forget his whole life.

“We were actually thinking,” Brad said earnestly, “We haven’t seen so much of you lately what with you staying on the East Coast for the holidays. What would you say to a bit of real family bonding time this summer?”

“Uh…”

Judy cut in before Fred could come up with an excuse, “It has been _such_ a long time,” she enthused – Fred carefully did not think of it as ‘oozing’ – “Go on, Freddie! We could go somewhere – oh, I know you and the gang must have seen almost everything on your way over there…”

“Why not fishing?” Brad suggested, and that at least was familiar – the hearty, over-enthusiastic tone of someone trying to do What Fathers Did. It made Fred’s skin crawl to hear it again, and he _knew_ that reaction was entirely unfair, but he couldn’t help it. “You always used to like coming fishing with me when you were younger.”

“I…uh…” Fred honestly could not imagine a world in which he liked fishing. It was even more surreal than liking soccer. “I can’t,” he blurted out at the last moment, “There’s a…thing. I have to do. For Mr E – Harlan Ellison, I mean. We’ve, uh…um…yeah, a thing.”

“Oh,” said Judy, in a small, hurt voice that made the guilty prickle under Fred’s skin intensify still further. “Well…if you say so, Fred.”

“But-” Brad start it.

“Brad, leave it,” Judy said warningly, “Fred knows his own mind – you _will_ come back and visit, sometime this summer?”

Fred swallowed. He didn’t want to hurt them, but he didn’t know he could trust himself to be _normal_ around them, to act as though every paranoid instinct he had didn’t go into overdrive whenever they were around.

“I- I’ll try,” he managed, and assured them he’d call, knowing the whole time he wouldn’t but not wanting to say it. Finally, he hung up, set the phone down, rubbed both hands over his face and wished everyone remembered the same version of reality just so he could feel like less of a tool for what he was about to do.

The next day, he filed the paperwork to change his name back to ‘Jones’.

**Scooby**

Nova is gone. In this world, she never was there at all, and Scooby doesn’t know why. He knows what she was, of course. Maybe it was only ever the Anunnaki he knew. He doesn’t like to think about that possibility, or about the way it had felt, to be so close to the coffin where the entity was bound. For a moment, he had understood the urge to serve, to be close to it in any way he could, and it terrifies him even now. Pericles had fallen to it, so too had Porto the donkey and all the others who had come before him, and he was just Scooby Doo, who couldn’t even protect his own friends in the face of the Entity. And for a moment, there, he had _wanted_ to serve it, had delayed long enough to let it speak and let Pericles catch up to them. If they had only struck before the Entity had fully emerged…well, Scooby didn’t know if the changes to the world were because the Entity had destroyed their old universe, or because Velma was right and the destruction of that thing was enough to undo all it had ever done. But things might have been different.

As it was, this timeline had never been that _bad_ , exactly. Mr and Mrs Rogers had been a lot kinder to him, since the Entity was destroyed, and Scooby liked to think it was because this was who they were when unaffected by the Entity’s corruption, and not that the world had been recreated with the specific goal of making Scooby Doo happy with the way things were now. He’d had a chance to visit his sister Ruby and her family while they were road-tripping, and Scrappy and Flim-Flam had never got caught in this world. Well, not yet anyway. The two of them were still happily getting into mischief together, and it was even mischief of a mostly-legal nature here. There’d even been a suggestion of Scrappy coming to stay for a while, as his previous visits in this world had apparently gone far better than the one attempt at it that had been made in the old timeline.

And Scooby wanted that, he did, it was only…this world had as many monsters as the last had had, but more of them seemed to be real. Not that they got involved in their cases terribly often, but Scooby had seen things in Arkham that made him think of the Entity’s cruel beak and winding tentacles. He had seen the writer, Ravencroft, dragged into another world by his own ancestress, during that one incident in Oakhaven, and spent the next week hiding under Shaggy’s bed, trying not to think of the way the Entity had sucked everything into its endless maw. He didn’t want to think of Scrappy facing something like that, not when he’d been so desperate to be useful, and so utterly incapable of realising that the world didn’t work like it did in cartoons, and that people really were trying to kill them. He’d nearly died before Ruby had dragged him home in the old world, and even if none of the others wanted to talk about it, Scooby knew it had been his fault. So had Ruby known – she’d made it clear enough she didn’t want any of her puppies anywhere near Crystal Cove if she could help it.

“Why wouldn’t I want him to stay with you?” Ruby demanded over the new Creationex face-time app. “Arkham’s further away than the Cove was, but your life can’t be that busy.”

“Rit is,” Scooby said darkly. “Rhere’s monsters. And traps. And…other things.” He didn’t think Scrappy would like sharing an apartment with five people, of various species, all of whom screamed sometimes in the night, and had things they Did Not Mention – not just simple lack of discussion, but the whole cold weight of Not Talking About Things.

“Go on, Scooby,” she said, not knowing any of that, “You know Scrappy idolises you – he’s even been making a scrapbook of all your adventures. D’you know how hard it is to make a scrapbook with no opposable thumbs?”

Scrappy had hero-worshipped him in the other world too. That had been a large part of the problem, that he’d been so _desperate_ to impress everyone that he’d gone running into every monster they faced, ready to get into a fistfight with all of them even though he was just a little scrap of a puppy who kept tripping over his own too-large paws.

“Rit’s dangerous, Ruby!” he said instead. “Rhe Ghost Clown nearly killed Shaggy, and the Snow Ghost tried to saw Velma in two.”

“So? You don’t get into these things during the semesters, do you?”

“Rar too often,” Scooby muttered. “Ruby-”

Ruby scowled at him through the screen – where she’d got her paws on one, Scooby didn’t know, but he suspected Flim-Flam had had a hand in it somewhere – and put one paw to the camera. “You listen to me, Scoobert,” she said sternly, “You are going to have your nephew to visit, and you are going to keep him safe, do you understand? You can keep your humans perfectly safe, you can do the same thing for a puppy.”

“Rit’s not the same!” Scooby barked, “Arkham is full of weird, _weird_ stuff, Ruby. It’s not a good place for him!”

“Then it can’t be a very good place for you,” Ruby retorted, “You never saw anything that scared you that you couldn’t run away from.”

Scooby nearly growled at that. He hadn’t been able to run from the Entity, and not just because there hadn’t been anywhere left to run to, although it may have been a contributing factor.

“Ro clearly I see a lot of scary things,” he pointed out, “Rand Scrappy would only try and fight them, which never works.”

Well, not when you were Scrappy-sized, anyway. Scooby loved his nephew, of course he did, but that pup was going to end up as mincemeat if he tagged along with them, and he really, really didn’t want that on his conscience, not on top of everything else.

It took another hour of arguing to convince Ruby that no, it really wasn’t safe for Scrappy to come to Arkham, where he would almost inevitably find a way of getting eaten by Deep Ones or fall prey to one of Doctor Crawford’s more peculiar experiments. Scooby might not have been able to protect his world from the Entity, but he could keep Scrappy out of things, and maybe this time he’d be able to make sure the kid got out all right.

**Shaggy**

Life’s changed a lot since the world ended. It would kind of have to, Shaggy knew, but…he wasn’t expecting it to last. It had been a matter of days, the worst of it, but he can’t forget it. The first time he ordered a pepperoni pizza after the world started again, he couldn’t get down more than a couple of bites without seeing Mr E in the jaws of the Entity, and he spent about half an hour during that first road-trip from Crystal Cove to Arkham throwing up in the first truck stop restroom they came to, trying to get the taste of it out of his mouth. The rest of the gang seem to have tacitly decided not to ask why Shaggy always asks for the vegetarian option these days, and tries not to look too long at the rest of them eating meat. They’ve all got a few things like that, things they just don’t mention and try to work around. No big deal. Or at least, it wasn’t before the first time he went home for Thanksgiving, when everything just got so much more complicated.

It’s not like Shaggy spent his whole life looking for his mom to be proud of him, the way it was with Fred and his dad. Oh, no, Shaggy Rogers had more sense than that. Ok, it might’ve been nice if she ever got off his back about his friends or his appearance or his eating habits, but it would also have been nice to eat a marshmallow the size of Jupiter, and he’d never really expected that would happen either. The point is, Shaggy’s never expected much out of his parents. Dad was never all that interested in having a kid and didn’t know what to do when he got one, and Mom had ideas about Her Son and no qualms about making it clear that Shaggy didn’t measure up to them. It’s kind of weird, after eighteen years of that, to have them care about him. Or…not about him, exactly, but about the guy they think he is. The one who won all those fancy awards, who’s never even heard of a Vincent Van Ghoul movie because there _are_ no Vincent Van Ghoul movies in this crazy world, the one Shaggy replaced. But, the thing is, life was so much easier when his mom had just given up expecting anything from him. When she didn’t call up demanding to know why he hadn’t joined any of the various epicurean societies associated with the university, and he didn’t have to worry about comments about how ‘really, you’re wasting your potential, Norville’. It came as news to Shaggy that he had potential at all. But all of that, he could deal with, over the phone. Ok, his parents called more often than Fred’s, but that was cool, Shaggy could get through a few minutes of conversation – his mom did most of the talking anyway. It was weird, hearing her talk about ‘that nice Chiles boy’ or describing them as ‘a very talented group of young people, haven’t I always said so’, but at least she couldn’t see his face when she did it. But he coped all right with that, at least until the first time he came home to Crystal Cove for Thanksgiving with Daphne and Velma, and actually had to spend time in the same room as his parents.

The first shock came when he got through arrivals and found his parents waiting at the exit – he was expecting they’d just send a driver. The second shock came just a few seconds later, when his mother threw her arms around him in what took a few seconds for Shaggy to identify as a hug. She was _hugging_ him. How was he supposed to deal with that?

“Norville!” she said warmly, which was never an adverb Shaggy could have used to describe her before. “It’s good to see you again! And where’s Scooby?”

Shaggy rubbed awkwardly at the back of his neck. “Uh…Scoob wanted to stay back in Arkham. Like, keep Fred company, you know?”

“Yes – the Chileses did mention he wasn’t coming home for Thanksgiving break,” his father agrees, clapping Shaggy on the back, “In the meantime, why don’t you tell us all about this mystery-solving society of yours? It gave your mother quite a turn, seeing you all on the news like that.”

“Uh…” Shaggy stared down at his shoes, just waiting for the disapproval to begin. “Like…if you’re sure, I guess?”

“Of course we want to hear about it, Norville,” his mother said chidingly, “We’re so proud! Our son, the one who caught the Phantom of Vasquez Castle, the Ghost Clown, _and_ the Ghost of Captain Cutler!”

“But-” Shaggy started, “Like, you never-” _You never seemed very proud of me before_ , he nearly said, but stopped himself just in time.

His mom smiled at him, and it didn’t look even the slightest bit false. It felt a bit like Shaggy had stepped into another- Oh, wait, he had done. And this _still_ didn’t make any sense until he remembered that the son his mom was so proud of had ceased to exist when the universe got reset, if he’d ever existed at all.

“Come on,” his father said, “I’ve missed your cooking, since you’ve gone away.”

And Shaggy wasn’t a bad cook or anything – even back in the old world, the gang made him miss dinner often enough he’d had to learn how to put a meal together on his own. Now they were at college, they couldn’t eat out all the time, and none of the rest of the gang was going to make enough to satisfy him or Scoob, let alone both of them together. It was just…well, this guy, the one he was replacing, he’d won _awards_ for it, and his parents were bound to pick up on the difference between that and Shaggy just throwing together what he liked to eat, weren’t they?

Fortunately, his counterpart still had most of his recipe books at home, thick with annotations in handwriting that looked enough like Shaggy’s own that it didn’t feel weird to use them, and _anyone_ could follow a recipe. Some of the annotations were even things Shaggy could imagine doing just for the hell of it, but that didn’t do anything to take away from how weird it was to not have to defend everything he did. This world’s version of him apparently screwed things up rarely enough that his parents weren’t constantly waiting for him to do so. What must that be like? He turned to say as much to Scooby, then remembered Scoob wasn’t there. He was on his own here, and that just made everything so much worse. He could already feel the nerves rising, and he knew, he just knew, he was going to say something wrong or do something wrong or just- completely screw up everything, and ok, his parents seemed to care about him here, but one thing that eighteen years with them in the other world had taught him was that there were always, always conditions attached.

“It’s been a while since you last made this, Norville,” his mother said over dinner, her fork held delicately between her plate and her mouth.

Shaggy swallowed, wrapping his fingers tight around his wrist under the table. “Yeah…I, uh…haven’t had much time to cook these days, what with all the mystery-solving and all…”

“That’s a shame,” his father said peaceably.

“Still,” his mother added, “At least you’ve found something else you’re good at – of course, we’ve been following all your adventures.”

There was nothing ‘of course’ about it, but Shaggy couldn’t say that, because this world was different and nothing made sense and right now he’d give anything to be back in Arkham with Scoob, not here in Crystal Cove waiting for the first shoe to drop.

It was weirder still when, the next morning, when Shaggy said he was going to meet Daphne, neither of his parents said anything against him. His mom even told him to _give her regards to Daphne_. And, ok, this was an alternate world, but Shaggy wasn’t expecting things to be quite _this_ alternate.

“I _know_ ,” Daphne sighed, tracing stars in the condensation on the table, “Velma said it might be influenced by our subconscious wishes and desires, which I guess makes sense…” she bit her lip, looking guilty.

“Like, what was it for you?” Shaggy asked morosely, picking at his fries. “I can’t live like this, Daphne! They’re always…” he shuddered, “ _Expecting_ things. Neither of them said a thing about my table manners all evening – there’s got to be something wrong with that, right?”

“You’re lucky,” Daphne shot back, “My parents haven’t changed a bit. My _sisters_ …” she shook her head. “Never mind. But, look, it’s not like you’re the only one. And if they’re that bad, why did you come back? Freddie didn’t.”

Shaggy stared down at his food. It wasn’t like he’d really chosen to come home at all. He knew he’d get a very long phone call from his mom to complain if he didn’t. Anyway, it wasn’t as if they’d ever tried to kill him or anything, which was more than could be said for a lot of people in Crystal Cove.

“I just…I wasn’t expecting things to be this different,” he said, “Like…I knew it would have to be a bit different, but I sort of figured…after a while, maybe, things would settle down and be sort of normal again.”

“The world ended, Shaggy,” Daphne said flatly. “What could be _normal_ after that?”

Shaggy sighed. “Yeah, well…” he trailed off, not even sure what he wanted to say next. “I dunno, Daphne. Seems to me this whole world’s looking a lot less ideal the more I see of it.”

Or rather, it was looking _too_ ideal. That was the problem. Because sooner or later, everything was going to come crashing down around his ears, and Shaggy really, really didn’t want to be there when it happened. It had been bad enough the way his mother treated him when he had never seen her any other way. Having her do it after however many months of distant, but for lack of any other evidence _fond_ , phone calls and anxious enquiries after his health and well-being would be harder. They’d sent _care packages_. Care packages! Even Fred’s parents didn’t do that. It was just plain unnatural, was what it was. And none of it, none of it could last, because sooner or later his parents would realise that the son they’d sent off to college wasn’t the same son they’d been proud of in high school. When he’d tried to explain that to the counsellors at the university, they’d said no-one felt like they deserved that sort of thing. Still, Shaggy had to feel that having _literally_ transferred in from another universe ought to be enough of a justification to satisfy anyone.

“Of course it is,” Daphne said, “It’s a world. Not everything awful about the old Crystal Cove could have been down to that evil entity. Most of it seems to have been,” she added, staring around at the clean streets, the happy, sane, _living_ people outside, none of whom knew from what fate they had been saved. “But not all of it.”

After that, it got worse. There was no avoiding that, not when every kind word made him cringe slightly, knowing it wasn’t meant for him. It would have been better if Scoob was there, because with Scoob around, he’d have had to leave his room at least to walk him, and a full-grown Great Dane needed a _lot_ of walking. Or, even without that, Scoob could at least have jolted Shaggy out of himself, got him to stop dwelling on it all. But, with Scoob in Arkham and Shaggy in California, there wasn’t any hope there. He hadn’t even noticed it had got so bad even his parents had started to notice it, at least until hunger finally drove him down to the kitchen in the middle of the night, to find his father already sitting there, waiting.

He froze. “Uh…hey, Dad?”

“Hello, Norville,” his father said, nodding at the seat opposite him, “Won’t you sit down?”

Shaggy fidgeted nervously with the hem of his t-shirt. “Um…like, if you’re sure.” His father had never shown that much interest in…well, anything…before. It wasn’t that he’d ever mistreated Shaggy, but he hardly seemed to notice anything Shaggy did, or even if he was in the room, and being treated like a particularly troublesome piece of furniture had never been precisely _fun_.

“I’m sure,” his father said mildly. “Listen…Norville, your mother and I have been talking…”

Shaggy’s heart sank. “Like…you really don’t have to do that.”

“I think we do. Norville, you’ve been locked in your room almost the whole of your break. You haven’t even come out to eat. Now, there isn’t that long left, but is there anything you want to tell us?”

Shaggy stared down at his hands. What was he supposed to say? It wasn’t as if he could tell them the truth.

“I- Everyone keeps talking about me as if I’m doing all these great things,” he said, “But…it doesn’t feel like I’ve done anything, really, except run away from a load of creepy guys in masks. And- And even before that, with the whole chefs’ club thing…I was just some slacker who happened to like food a lot, it- none of it really feels like it was _me_ doing any of it. And- And I just keep thinking sooner or later everyone else is going to figure that out too…”

His father cleared his throat. “You know,” he said, “You’re not what either of us was expecting in a son.”

Shaggy sighed. “Yeah,” he said gloomily. “I know.”

“It isn’t a complaint, you know. Your mother had her heart set on your being an artist, and I…well, I hardly had any expectations at all.” His father fidgeted a little at that, “You must understand, Norville…in my day, a father wasn’t expected to spend that much time with his children, not at our level in society. I was rather expecting it would be the same for me as it was for my father. Sometimes I worry Paula pushed you a bit too hard in the beginning, expecting you to be perfect right away.”

“I…uh…didn’t think you noticed,” Shaggy admitted. So far as he knew, in the old timeline his father really _hadn’t_ noticed. “You never said anything about it.”

“Yes, well…it didn’t seem like much of a concern, at the time.” His father coughed. Colton Rogers had never been particularly assertive, but now he seemed to be gearing up to say something. “The point is, Norville, that what you turned out to be good at wasn’t what either of us had expected of a son of ours. Whether it’s cooking or mystery-solving, that would still be the case. It’s never stopped us from being proud of what you’ve achieved before, even if it wasn’t what we thought we wanted for you.”

If he’d been this world’s Norville Rogers, Shaggy was sure that would have been a very reassuring speech indeed. As he wasn’t, it was about as soothing as being doused in orange juice and dropped whole on top of an anthill. Thanksgiving break would be over soon enough, and then maybe Shaggy could go back to Miskatonic and try to forget that the life he was living had been stolen from someone else.

**Velma**

Three days after they left Crystal Cove, Velma started making a list. It was not a formal project, and if any of the others ever saw it, she would be able to explain it without much difficulty. All the same, she tried to make sure they never did see it.

_Fact: We saved the world._

_Fact: None of it ever happened._

_Conjecture: This world is what the world ought to have been, if not for the Entity’s interference._

_Fact: This world seems catered to what we would want from it._

_Conjecture: This was intentional._

People had died. They had all seen that – she still sometimes heard Daphne crying out in her sleep, when they stopped at cheap motels and the two of them were obliged to share one room while Fred and Shaggy bunked up in the other. _Marcie_ had died. Sometimes, on the edge of sleep, Velma could still hear the click and rattle of the Gatling guns. After the first time, she tried to avoid sleeping too deeply, and calling home as often as she could.

“Wow, V,” Marcie said after the third time Velma had called home at two in the morning, just to hear her voice, “Never knew you were that interested in the mechanics of distilling super-helium from amusement-park steel.”

Velma shrugged, then remembered Marcie wouldn’t be able to see it, “I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately,” she admitted.

“Yeah,” Marcie agreed, her voice slipping down into something low and husky, “Me too. I miss you, V.”

Velma felt wetness on her cheeks, and blinked it away hastily. “Yeah,” she said, her voice oddly rough, “I…I really miss you, Marcie. I just…you _are_ all right, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am,” Marcie said, and Velma could _hear_ her grinning at the other end of the line. “Takes more than Gary and Ethan to get this girl down. I’m just a bit disappointed, I guess. I mean, we were going to go to Darrow University together, before you got the Miskatonic scholarship. Miskatonic’s a better school than Darrow, but…”

Velma sighed, “I’m sorry, Marcie,” she said, and meant it, “I just…there’s something I have to do.”

“Yeah, you said.” A sigh from the other end. “I’d better get some sleep. Night, V. Love you.”

“Love you too,” Velma said automatically, and heard the dial tone in her ear. “Shit,” she muttered, putting the phone down. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, _shit_.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t love Marcie – if she hadn’t, there wouldn’t have been a problem. Because, if her theory was true, if that were the case, Marcie wouldn’t think- wouldn’t have been in a relationship with the Velma that had existed in this world before Velma-as-she-was had overwritten her.

Velma did not like to theorise before she had all the facts, but not all of these changes could just be the natural result of Nibiru having never existed. She was, for example, at a loss to explain why Nibiru being gone would have so drastically ruined the lives of Daphne’s sisters, or erased every Vincent Van Ghoul movie ever made from existence, or rewritten them to star other actors instead. There was a greater force at work here, and it seemed to conform to what they wanted, more than what made sense. For, in a world without the Entity, who was to say that any of them ought to have been born at all?

She and Marcie – her own world’s Marcie, the one who had died – had never really said anything. They’d been too shy in the beginning, and later…well, there had hardly been time. And then Marcie had been dead, and the world had been burning. This world’s Velma, mercifully, was as incurable a diarist as Velma herself, and she had been able to cobble together a reasonable understanding of this world from that in the last few days before they had been able to set off for Miskatonic.

This world’s Marcie and Velma had been together for months, and best friends for years before that. Velma had to go through twelve volumes of diary spanning the better part of six years just to find out that they had been rivals, once. _That_ had apparently ended when they were still in middle school, when they’d been paired off for a project and neither of them been willing to sacrifice their pride even to sabotage each other. It was the sort of start Velma would have imagined for them, and that did nothing for her temper. This whole world felt…cheap, too much of a paradise for Velma’s liking. It was easier once they were out of Crystal Cove, in places with actual litter and grime and unhappiness. Velma didn’t know what that said about her, but whatever it was, she didn’t like it.

_Fact: Marcie had been, or believed she had been, involved with the Velma that had been in this world before._

_Fact: Velma-as-she-was was not the same person as the Velma whom Marcie had been involved with._

_Fact: Informed consent was impossible if Marcie did not know who she was consenting to a relationship with._

_Fact: Velma didn’t want to break up with Marcie_.

However Velma looked at it, there was no winning here. If she told Marcie the truth, there was no guarantee Marcie would believe her. If she didn’t tell Marcie the truth, there was no way Velma could continue a relationship with Marcie and still be able to look at herself in the mirror. With her in Massachusetts and Marcie in California, it wouldn’t come up anytime soon, but sooner or later she’d have to make a choice.

As it turned out ‘sooner or later’ proved to be a matter of days, just over a week, before Thanksgiving break. The road-trip had been a long one, and it had taken them all over, but once they were in Arkham Velma had expected things to settle down. They hadn’t. Arkham, she was beginning to understand, was not the sort of place one went if one was looking for a nice, peaceful few years of quiet study. There were the cultists, for one thing. And the shambling, tentacled fiends who, it turned out, were not people in costumes after all. And Doctor West over in the medical college and his experiments with human cadavers. And, of course, there was what had happened in Innsmouth. Velma didn’t like to think too much about what had happened in Innsmouth. The point was, though, that there was enough going on that investigating the Curse of Crystal Cove and how the world had changed took a backseat to dealing with all the mysteries popping up around them every day. So it was kind of understandable, then, that Velma looked up at her calendar to see there was just over a week left until she’d have to either tell Marcie everything or cut her out of her life for good, and panicked, just a little.

Or…just a lot, anyway. Because the thing was, the thing _was_ …Velma didn’t want to lose her. Sometimes, knowing Marcie was alive, and out there, somewhere, doing great things because Marcie could never be anything less than great, was all that got Velma through the day. This life, this world, this _everything_ was new, and Velma had to remember what they had won that made it all worth it, or- Well, she didn’t know what would happen then, but it wouldn’t be good. And she couldn’t talk to any of the others about it, because she already knew what she’d say – Daphne loved everything about this new reality now they had found some fresh mysteries to solve, Fred was not the person to go to for romantic advice, and Shaggy and Scooby…just no. Velma had her pride, and she wouldn’t go to her ex-boyfriend for advice about her new girlfriend either, especially given how awful that whole relationship had been. Granted, a lot of that had been as much her fault as Shaggy’s, but it was the _principle_ of the thing.

“Jeez, V,” Marcie said, when Velma logged on to Skype – or whatever this world had instead of Skype, some sort of Creationex app that Velma didn’t know –  that evening. “You look…uh, I can’t even say ‘as if you’ve seen a ghost’, because those just get you excited. Rough day?”

“You have no idea,” Velma said dryly, “I just…Marcie. There’s…” she bottled at the last minute, “There’s someone who means a lot to me,” she said, “And I haven’t told them something. Something really, really important. More important than anything, but…” she screwed her eyes shut, “I’m worried,” she admitted, “About how – about how they’ll react, and whether they’ll believe me.”

“…V,” Marcie said, and Velma opened her eyes to see Marcie looking insufferably patient, and wearing an expression which said to anyone with eyes that Marcie thought she’d figured the whole thing out. “If they care about you, they’ll hear you out, they’ll believe you, and they won’t care any less. And if they don’t, they’re not worth having.”

Oh, god. Velma _knew_ what Marcie thought this was about. It would make things so much easier, if that was what all this was about. Velma’s family had been absurdly accepting about the ‘Velma’s nebulous but definitely non-straight sexuality’ thing. Apparently, that held true in either world. She could have done without the story of her mom’s youthful experiments with drugs and orgies, admittedly, but so far everyone had been cool. She doesn’t have that many friends outside the gang, and Marcie and, to her slight horror, Jason Wyatt, whose crush on her was a lot less grating in this world than it was in the last. Well, no-one had tried to kill her over it yet, anyway, which was a definite improvement on how things went last time around.

“It’s not about that,” she said quickly, “Or…not entirely…look, Marcie, this is something I wouldn’t expect you to believe in a million years…”

Marcie stared at her, “You were asking me about a hypothetical situation that actually _involves_ me?” she said flatly. “Look, whatever it is, it can’t be that huge, right? I dealt with the ‘my girlfriend now has a fan club’ thing pretty well, and that was about the weirdest thing life could throw at us.”

“You’d be sur- Wait, what do you mean _‘fan club’_?”

Marcie snorted. “Oh, yeah. Apparently, people like plucky teenage detectives in short skirts,” she said, leaning towards the camera. “Fortunately, no-one believes I’m really going out with you, or I’d be getting mobbed in the cafeteria.”

Velma laughed, “We didn’t do _that_ much,” she said, “Besides, no-one here’s making much of a fuss – you’re making it up, aren’t you?”

“Never underestimate the appeal of a ‘local girl solves crime while wearing a very short skirt’ story, V,” Marcie said, with a grin that was only just this side of being a leer. “I saw three girls and someone I’m pretty sure identifies as a guy dressed up as you last week.”

Velma just didn’t know how to deal with that. She wasn’t anything that glamorous, and most of the news articles had made more of Daphne and Fred than the rest of them, the ones who didn’t look that good on camera and weren’t nearly as much fun to talk about. She wondered what people back home had made of Fred always introducing himself as ‘Fred Jones’, and only a handful of the papers who’d covered their escapades ever bothering to look up his legal name. Discretion was probably the better part of valour there, though.

“That’s…disturbing,” Velma said, shifting guiltily. “But…yes, it’s bigger than that. It’s bigger than…than anything. And you’re probably going to think I’m crazy, by the time I’ve finished explaining it, but I’m not, I swear I’m not.”

Marcie had gone still. “I think,” she said, a little shakily, “That this is the sort of conversation we ought to have face to face.”

“Yeah,” Velma agreed quickly, “That makes sense. I’ll…I should go. There’s a paper due tomorrow, so-”

“Sure,” Marcie said, and cracked a very forced smile. “See you in a few days then, V.”

“Goodbye, Marcie,” Velma said, trying not to hear the awful finality she had not meant the words to hold.

**Author's Note:**

> Fred uses the term 'real parents' because that is the term he uses on the show, even after he starts to feel that Fred Jones Sr was a better parent to him than Brad and Judy. And, yes, I know it is unfair to hold what happened in the previous timeline against them. The thing is, trauma reactions often aren't fair on anyone, and Fred has good reason to be very, very wary of his birth parents, particularly as he didn't actually have that long to get to know them before they were corrupted.


End file.
